|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 24
He started.
She looked up at him, and, still with the same look of stereotyped
horror on her thin, white face, whispered, in a hoarse voice, as she
pointed to the boarded-up shop-door with a shaking forefinger:
"You daren't go in there, do you? There's a dead man in there!"
CHAPTER VII.
A QUESTIONABLE GUIDE.
Max started violently at the girl's voice.
"A dead man? In there? How do you know?"
In a hoarse voice the girl answered:
"How do I know? The best way possible. _I saw it done!_"
There was an awful silence. Max was so deeply impressed by the girl's
words, her looks, her manner, by the gloom of the cold, dark passage, by
the desolate appearance of the two deserted buildings before which they
stood, that his first impulse was an overpowering desire to run away.
Acting upon it he even took a couple of rapid steps in the direction of
the street he had left, passing the girl and getting clear of the
uncanny boarded-up front of the shop.
A moan from the girl made him stop and look around at her. Emboldened by
this, she came close to him again and whispered:
"You're a man; you ought to have more pluck than I've got. It's two days
since it happened--"
"Two days!" muttered Max, remembering that it was two days ago that he
had surprised Dudley with his blood-stained hands.
"And for those two days I've been outside here waiting for somebody to
come because I daren't go inside by myself. Two days! Two days!" she
repeated, her teeth chattering.
Max looked at her with mixed feelings of doubt, pity and astonishment.
It was too dark in the ill-lighted passage for him to see all the
details of her appearance. She was young, quite young; so much was
certain. She looked white and pinched and miserably cold. Her dress was
respectable, very plain, and bore marks of her climbing and crawling
over the timber on the wharf.
"Won't you go in with me?" she asked again, more eagerly, more
tremulously than before. "I can show you the road--round at the back.
You will have a little climbing to do, but you won't mind that."
"But what do you want me to do if I do get inside?" said Max. "It's the
police you ought to send for, if a man has died in there. Go to the
police station and give information."
The girl shook her head.
"I can't do that," she whispered. Then, after a shuddering pause, she
came a step nearer and said, in a lower whisper than ever: "He didn't
die--of his own accord. He was murdered."
Max grew hot, and cold. He heartily wished he had never come.
"All the more reason," he went on in a blustering voice, "why you should
inform the police. You had better lose no time about it."
"I can't do that," said the girl, "because he--the man who did it--was
kind to us--kind to Granny and me. If I tell the police, they will go
after him, and perhaps find him, and--and hang him. Oh, no," and she
shook her head again with decision, "I could not do that."
Max was silent for a few moments, looking at her for the first few
seconds with pity and then with suspicion.
"Why do you tell all this to me, then--a stranger--if you're so afraid
of the police finding out anything about it?"
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|